Don't Be the Worst: How to Break Up

Yes, it's hard. But if you have to do it, break up with your lady like a man. And be sure to avoid the strategies that, for eons, have made men the a-holes of the ses

Sometimes, it’s hard to break up with somebody without being a little dishonest.

Of course, the preferred way is a kind, clean break in a well-lit, alcohol-free, face-to-face scenario. Over coffee if it’s a new relationship, or quietly at home for more completed ones. We encourage truthfulness, efficiency, and compassion. Band-Aids get invoked a lot.

But if you’re like me, you’d rather use professional-magician-grade FX to avoid honest confrontation. If you’re like me, the other person is so distracted by the white tiger you’re flying around the room that it barely registers when you whisper, "This just isn’t working," over the throbbing klezmer music. If you’re like me, you’ve gotten a text like, "Did you just disappear into that slow motion vortex of doves and fire?" or, "If that Barnes Noble manager thinks I’m paying for the broken window, you’re BOTH insane!"

It’s easy to candidly dump somebody who doesn’t seem that into you, and it’s borderline Shawshank-y with somebody who doesn’t treat you well. The hard part is being honest with someone nice who is actually happy being with you, after you’ve stopped feeling the same way.

So, I guess you could lie a little.

I mean, I don’t advocate this. Especially since when it comes to convincing breakup lies, I’m basically the screenwriter of Mrs. Doubtfire. (In high school, I once took advantage of a new haircut to pretend to a guy that I was my own fraternal twin.) But sometimes, the most humane thing to do is Not Tell the Entire Truth.

I bring this all up because it’s breakup season—long-term relationships grow claustrophobic when forced back indoors, and the prospect of parties, relatives, and gift anxiety can cool a new romance to the temperature of forgotten gravy. Sometimes it takes seeing someone in a turtleneck sweater to make us realize that we’re dead inside for them.

These are the best two weeks to tell somebody you care about that you’d like to spend this New Year’s Eve bored and overdressed at separate parties. But lest we forget the other purpose of the season, here are a couple of things not to do when breaking up with a woman the Almost Honest way...year-round.

Don’t Flatter

I admit: I have looked directly into a guy’s eyes and said, "This is just the realest thing I’ve felt for anybody and it scares me to death." I mean, holy God, is this effective...temporarily. As elegant an exit strategy as "leather jacket loner who’s afraid to love" is, this does not a clean break make. I mean, not unless you literally drive off in your Thunderbird, crushing your smartphone under the wheel in the process. You’re saying, "I am desperate to be away from you permanently, but I am open to having sex before that happens" but they’re hearing "Better double up on those prenatal vitamins!" This is the Wrong Way to Lie #1.

Don’t Be Cruel

While you shouldn’t be flat-out dishonest, this isn’t a futuristic utopia where people wipe with seashells and childlike frankness rules the day. If you aren’t attracted to her or the sex is awful or you wish for death whenever she pronounces "disapora" incorrectly, she doesn’t need to know that. These are all things that can be distilled into satisfying generalities. Telling her that you’re "in different places" is so much better than saying, "I feel like I’m putting my penis in one of those Alpine ice mummies." Because it’s partially true: You’re "in a place" where you want to enjoy sex, and she’s "in a place" where she wants to lie perfectly still with her eyes squeezed shut like every time is an arranged marriage wedding night. If the whole truth is too ugly, it’s okay to bolster the partial truth with an honest cop-out.

Don’t Act Like It’s a Favor

If you want to do something altruistic, go to a filthy beach and find an oily otter. Gently scrub him with Dawn, remove the six-pack ring caught around his little leg, then watch him gambol joyously back into the wild when you release him on a clear spring morn. Don’t do this to women. We are not industrial cleanup sites! (I mean, I am, but most of us aren’t.) Don’t lie to us so it seems like you’re setting us free. If for no other reason than it’s a bad fib: you don’t think we’re amazing! If you really think somebody is amazing, you don’t break up with her. This means no, "Someday you’re going to meet somebody who loves you the way you deserve to be loved" or "You’re so great and you should be with somebody who isn’t so screwed up." Save it for the otters, Jayson Blair.

Don’t Have One Foot Out the Door or Deep Inside Another Person

I used to think that a good way to prep somebody for imminent dumpage was to act like I was already single. Not cheating, per se (okay, sometimes cheating), but making plans for weekend and couple holidays without regard to what they were doing, and just kind of not "showing up" any more. It’s a cowardly way to tip someone off that you don’t want to date them anymore, and it just sort of makes them slowly hate you. It’s an iteration of deceit. It also cements your place as "The Asshole" with mutual acquaintances and with Judge Judy, who you definitely want in your corner when she’s divvying up the custom car detailing business you started together, back when you were still in love. "Your honor, he has been neglecting me for months, leaving me to run Shorty Got Low(Riders) LLC all alone." "That sonafabitch! I grant you court expenses and all remaining whistle tips."

Don’t Be a High School English Teacher

For some reason, some people like the longggggggggg method of breaking up. You know, with multiple lengthy conversations and the dreaded seven-page follow up email. ABRIDGE! Too much honesty is the worst. This means no epic summary of why things weren’t working and where you went wrong. This is not time to be Daniel Stern, wrapping things up with takeaway narration. If it was, we would be laughing through our tears instead of burning cigarette holes in photographs of your eyes. And if you send an email quoting ANYTHING—"The Second Coming" or Barthes or God help you Bob Dylan—you have cemented your place in the pantheon of Awful Ex-Boyfriends. I’m not a legal expert (just a really huge Judge Judy fan!) but if you write a breakup letter I’m pretty sure the recipient is allowed sneak into your house when you’re asleep and shoot roman candles at you.

Don’t Be Too Nice

It sounds counterintuitive, but there’s a time when you really do have to shut it down. Breakups suck, and even the nicest, most stable woman can turn into that crazy white girl who tried to steal Beyoncé’s husband in Obsessed. Remember, a rocket can’t soar until the burnt out boosters disengage! (Go ahead and use that, it’s on me.) If you’ve broken up with her kindly and sincerely, and she still insists on acting all nutty and dragging things out, tell her as nicely as you possibly can that the conversation ceased to be productive. There’s a point where kindness is just sublimated guilt.

Maybe it’s wrong to tell you to fudge the truth, even in the interest of protecting somebody you care about. Somebody who really is better off without you will get over "The Truth" eventually. But somebody who really is happier with you... Well, she’ll never really be less hurt by knowing exactly why you just don’t feel the same way. The truth is, I don’t think there is a "humane" way to break up with someone who really loves you, except to hold her hand when she’s old and infirm, long after years of affectionate marriage have forged a deeper, more complex and perhaps more enduring kind of love, and then wait a respectful period after her death before hitting the clubs.

Julieanne Smolinski AKA Boobs Radley is a writer who has been in a monogamous relationship with the Internet since 1993. She tweets here.

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